A sustainable local economy improves human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and natural resource scarcity.

A sustainable local economy is resource efficient, low-carbon, socially responsible and diverse.

It prioritizes an economy that creates jobs in green-growth industries, investment in cleaner technologies, innovation, skills and entrepreneurship, all of which are needed to create sustainable cities.

A sustainable local economy seeks fundamentally new models of production and consumption, changing and decoupling economic growth from resource consumption and environmental degradation, and factoring in environmental and social costs into the price of goods and services. This can only be realized by forward-thinking local and regional governments that are committed to developing an enabling policy, legal and financial framework.